NMAT: The major change in NMAT 2012, as announced, is the introduction of timed sections. The three sections are:

• QA – 48 questions – 60 minutes
• VA – 32 questions – 22 minutes
• LR – 40 questions – 38 minutes

The good thing is that NMAT 2012 allows the student to decide the order in which they want to attempt the sections. A section-order-screen appears after the tutorial which shows all the six possible permutations: VA-QA-LR, QA-LR-VA, VA-LR-QA etc. A student has to select one of the six and then the sections are displayed as per the selection. Once the selection is made, it cannot be changed at a later stage.

Since there is no negative marking in NMAT 2012, you should mark all 120 questions. The last 1-2 minutes in each section can be reserved for reviewing the “Incomplete questions” and marking them randomly. If you finish a section earlier than the allotted time, you can move on to the next section. However, since the time saved in one section does not get added to the next section, it is advisable not to submit the section earlier and revise the questions instead.

There are two major issues in the testing interface of NMAT 2012:

• The “Review” button, which is provided to check the unattempted and flagged questions, appears only at the end of a section. So, for e.g., if you are attempting the QA section, you cannot use the Review button before clicking the “Next” button at least 48 times. This reduces the utility of the Review button massively. For e.g., if you finish 24-25 questions in QA in around 30 minutes, you will still not know if you are on the right track since there is no way to check what’s in store towards the end of the section. Therefore, it is advisable to keep a buffer and skip any time-consuming questions in the first round and attempt them in the second round if time permits.

• In a group question, you cannot see the number of questions in that particular set on the first screen. So if you want to see if the set is worth attempting, you will need to click the Next/Previous buttons a few times and then check. This is quite irritating especially in a speed test like NMAT. 

For starters, the number of questions across sections was announced beforehand, thus ensuring that one of the biggest surprises was no longer there at all. The fixed time limit per section and the fixed order of the sections (QA + DI followed by VA + LR) ensured that students no longer had to worry over the vexatious issues of time management across sections, sequence of attempting different sections and so on. Perhaps the only surprise that CAT threw up this year was that even in the same slot, some students have reported that there were different papers.

Feedback from students who have taken CAT this year further indicates that the difficulty level has not varied drastically across slots or across different papers in the same slot. This will further ensure that no student will feel hard done by as everyone has got a comparable paper. This is perhaps the biggest improvement in CAT this year as opposed to some of the previous years.

Overall, the analysis of CAT across 11 different slots so far suggests that CAT this year, has not thrown up very tough papers. Around 20-22 attempts in QA + DI section (the first section) with about 85% accuracy should be a very good effort. In the VA + LR section around 23 to 24 attempts with about 80% accuracy will also be a good effort. This should be enough to get at least a few calls from top B-schools.

Further, combining DI with QA and LR with VA has resulted in a more even spread of questions than earlier. Every student should be able to find a few easy questions and a few tough but attemptable questions in either section this year. This will serve to ensure that CAT is that much more competitive this year and accordingly, cut-offs can be expected to be on the higher side.

We have already presented our analysis of the first 11 CAT slots so far. With not much variation appearing across slots or across different papers in the same slot, it is rather unnecessary to post a detailed analysis of each slot any longer. We will continue to post a tabular analysis of the difficulty level in each slot and the expected number of attempts. If any slot or paper comes up with a surprise, we will post a more detailed analysis of that slot.

We hope that our analysis was of assistance to all students and helped you better estimate your performance or soothed any anxieties that you may have had regarding your impending paper.

All the best,

To those who have already appeared for CAT 2011 and are now biting their nails in anticipation of the result.

And to those who are yet to appear for CAT 2011 and are biting their nails in anticipation of their paper.

- Team CL

The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each.

As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 21QA and 9DI questions. This section can be best described as time-consuming and every consecutive question seemed to demand more time than the former. A majority of the questions were based on Geometry and required the student to draw a diagram before solving the question.

The VA-LR section came with the usual set of questions – RCs, para-jumbles, sentence completion etc. Students reported that one of the RC passages came from English Literature and another, from Business Management.

Overall this test can be considered to be moderately difficult. An attempt of around 26 questions in QA&DI and 24 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 50uestions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered good.

All the Best!

-Team CL

The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each. The pattern of questions was similar to that of CAT ’08, ’09 and ’10.

As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 23-24 QA and 6-7 of DI questions. These included two simple questions on percentages and one question on logic. Students reported that the questions were easy, were not calculation intensive and could be attempted by the average student. The section was time consuming and some of the questions acted as speed-breakers slowing the pace. 2 questions were repeated from previous years’ CAT papers. The first was a question on Data Sufficiency and the second, a question on ratios. Students who have practiced regularly and have paid attention to previous years’ papers should have nothing to worry about.

The 30 questions of Section 2 were split as 11 questions of Logical Reasoning, 8 questions of Verbal Usage and 3 sets of questions of Reading Comprehension. As per the students, most of the LR questions were very easy, one RC passage and a few Verbal Usage questions (para completion and para-jumble) were tricky.

Overall this test can be considered to be on the easy to moderately difficult side, as each section had some questions that were a little time-consuming. An attempt of around 23-24 questions in QA&DI and 22-23 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 45-46 questions and an accuracy of 90% can be considered good.

All the Best!

-Team CL

The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each. According to the students, there was hardly any element of surprise in the test. The same set of 60 questions was not administered to all students. It appears that while the DI, Reasoning and RC sets were same for all students the individual questions of QA and Verbal Usage were different.

As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 22-23 QA and 7-8 of DI questions. A very few of the QA questions were difficult, and most of them could have been solved with direct formulas or short tricks. Students faced time pressure in this section.  In this slot, students reported there were around 7-8 questions from Set Theory (Venn Diagrams), 5-6 questions from Algebra and 1 question each from Time Speed and Distance, Logarithms and Geometry. Most of the questions were standard formula based questions.

The 30 questions of Section 2 were split as 9-10 questions of Logical Reasoning, 6-7 questions of Verbal Usage and 3 sets of questions of Reading Comprehension. As per the students, most of the LR questions were moderately difficult, one RC passage and a few Verbal Usage questions (para completion and para-jumble) were tricky. Students also reported a new type of VA question where they had to find out an out of context line from the options and one question on para completion was very tricky.

Overall this test can be considered to be moderately difficult as each section had some difficult questions. An attempt of around 22-23 questions in QA&DI and 19-20 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 41-42 questions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered good.

All the Best!

-Team CL

The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each. According to the students, there was hardly any element of surprise in the test. The same set of 60 questions was not administered to all students. It appears that while the DI, Reasoning and RC sets were same for all students the individual questions of QA and Verbal Usage were different.

As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 23-24 QA and 6-7 of DI questions. A very few of the QA questions were difficult, and most of them could have been solved with direct formulas or short tricks and DI was calculation intensive. Students faced time pressure in this section.  In this slot, students reported there were around 10 questions from Geometry, Trigonometry, Logarithms and Permutations and Combinations and 5 questions from set theory, number theory and functions. Most of the questions were standard questions which the students had already attempted in mock tests.

The 30 questions of Section 2 were split as 11 questions of Logical Reasoning, 8 questions of Verbal Usage and 3 sets of questions of Reading Comprehension. As per the students, most of the LR questions were easy, one RC passage and a few Verbal Usage questions (para completion and para-jumble) were tricky. Students also reported a new type of para-jumble question and one question in LR to be very time consuming.

Overall this test can be considered to be moderately difficult as each section had some difficult questions. An attempt of around 23-24 questions in QA&DI and 22-23 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 45-46 questions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered good.

All the Best!

-Team CL

Day 3, 25th October 2011 (Slot 2)

The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each. According to the students, there was hardly any element of surprise in the test. The same set of 60 questions was not administered to all students. It appears that while the DI, Reasoning and RC sets were same for all students the individual questions of QA and Verbal Usage were different.

As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 23-24 QA and 6-7 of DI questions. A few of the QA questions were difficult and DI was calculation intensive. Students faced time pressure in this section. Students also reported a few tricky questions on Functions.

As per the students, while the LR questions were of moderate difficulty, one RC passage and a few Verbal Usage questions (para completion and para-jumble) were tricky and time consuming.

Overall this test can be considered to be moderately difficult as each section had some difficult questions. According to students, two sets were more time consuming, as compared to the others. An attempt of around 20-21 questions in QA&DI and 17-18 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 38-39 questions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered good.

All the Best!

The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each. According to the students, there was hardly any element of surprise in the test. The same set of 60 questions was not administered to all students. It appears that while the DI, Reasoning and RC sets were same for all students the individual questions of QA and Verbal Usage were different.

As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 23-24 QA and 6-7 of DI questions. A few of the QA questions were difficult and DI was calculation intensive. Students faced time pressure in this section.  In this slot, students reported there were a few questions on Data Sufficiency.

The 30 questions of Section 2 were split almost equally between Logical Reasoning, Verbal Usage and Reading Comprehension. As per the students, while the LR questions were easy, one RC passage and a few Verbal Usage questions (para completion and para-jumble) were tricky. Students also reported a new type of para-jumble question.

Overall this test can be considered to be moderately difficult as each section had some difficult questions. An attempt of around 21-22 questions in QA&DI and 20-22 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 44-45 questions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered good.

All the Best!

The same set of 60 questions was not administered to all students. It appears that while the DI, Reasoning and RC sets were same for all students, the individual questions of QA and Verbal Usage were different.

As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 20-21 QA and 9-10 DI questions. A few of the QA questions were difficult. DI sets involved lots of data but most of them could be handled by doing simple approximations. In short, the challenging part of this section was some of the QA questions. Students felt short of time in the section because of the difficulty level. In this slot, students did not find any questions on Data Sufficiency.

The 30 questions of Section 2 were split almost equally between Logical Reasoning, Verbal Usage and Reading Comprehension. As per the students, the LR questions were quite easy. One RC passage was difficult to comprehend and a few Verbal Usage questions (para-completion and para-jumble) were tricky. Common-confusable-words and phrasal verb questions were absent. Students also reported a new type of Para Jumble question, similar to Slots 1 and 3.

Overall this test can be considered to be of moderate to high difficult level as each section had at least 6-8 difficult questions. An attempt of around 20 questions in QA&DI and 22-23 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 42-44 questions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered good.

The students should remember that there are 40 CAT slots and the above analysis is for the second slot on Oct 24, 2011 only. It should not be extrapolated to the other CAT slots.

All the Best!

- Team CL